Monday, December 10, 2007
"Mary, Did You Know?"
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One of my favorite Christmas songs is "Mary, Did You Know?" sung by the group 4Him. I love the words to the song. They ask the question to Mary, "Did you know that you son would walk on water? Did you know that your baby boy would one day heal that blind man? Did you know that your baby boy was Heaven's perfect plan?" I love those questions, because we do not know if Mary knew. What we do know is that Mary was faithful to what God had called her to do!
As a church we are on the threshold of another year to serve our Lord. I shared with the congregation this past Sunday our vision for 2008 and beyond. It is a vision filled with a lot of questions for which God has the answers. For over a year now we have been discussing and praying about the question of whether or not now is the time for us to go to two different worship services. After much discussion the staff and deacon body feel it is. As we continue to seek to make Christ famous in our community as well as maturing believers, I am excited about the opportunity that awaits us in 2008.
Beginning the first Sunday of January we will be having two services on Sunday morning. At 8:30 we will have our traditional service (what we have been doing at 10:50) and at 11:00 we will be led in worship by Ryan Hurt, Rainey Penix, Brody White, Shawna Ringling, and Nic Morphew. This is going to be a great opportunity for us to reach out to our community in a whole new way. Please know I also realize change is something we all do not handle well. Someone once said that the only people who like change are babies. What a true statement in many cases. With change comes opportunities to be stretched and with stretch comes growth. I hope you will be in prayer for our church as we begin this new venture with the goal being to reach new people.
One of the concerns I have going to two services is what I call the "get to know you factor". There will be new people joining in both services and it will be difficult to get to know everyone without a little effort. We will make sure to keep the new member board up to date, but to me this makes our Sunday School time even more important. If you are not plugged into a Sunday School class, you need to be. This is one area where you get to know people and find out who is who.
Many new things will be coming our way in the next year. There will be many questions waiting to be answered. The main thing in my opinion is to keep the I's and me's to a minimum and keep the He's and Him's to a maximum. In other words we need to keep our eyes on Jesus!
I want to remind you about a couple of holiday traditions our church has during the month of December. On December 2nd we will have our traditional Hanging of the Greens Service at 6:00pm. On December 9th we will be having our church family holiday meal. This is an opportunity for us as a staff to say thank you for the privilege of getting to serve you and for all the ways you bless us throughout the year. Then on the 16th we will have our churchwide Christmas song service at 6:00pm followed by our annual church Christmas party in the fellowship hall. On December 24th we will have our Candlelight Lord's Supper service at 6:00 pm in the Sanctuary. I hope you make every effort to be a part of these exciting events as we celebrate the birth of our Savior as a church family!
Merry Christmas! ¶ 6:20 PM
One of my favorite Christmas songs is "Mary, Did You Know?" sung by the group 4Him. I love the words to the song. They ask the question to Mary, "Did you know that you son would walk on water? Did you know that your baby boy would one day heal that blind man? Did you know that your baby boy was Heaven's perfect plan?" I love those questions, because we do not know if Mary knew. What we do know is that Mary was faithful to what God had called her to do!
As a church we are on the threshold of another year to serve our Lord. I shared with the congregation this past Sunday our vision for 2008 and beyond. It is a vision filled with a lot of questions for which God has the answers. For over a year now we have been discussing and praying about the question of whether or not now is the time for us to go to two different worship services. After much discussion the staff and deacon body feel it is. As we continue to seek to make Christ famous in our community as well as maturing believers, I am excited about the opportunity that awaits us in 2008.
Beginning the first Sunday of January we will be having two services on Sunday morning. At 8:30 we will have our traditional service (what we have been doing at 10:50) and at 11:00 we will be led in worship by Ryan Hurt, Rainey Penix, Brody White, Shawna Ringling, and Nic Morphew. This is going to be a great opportunity for us to reach out to our community in a whole new way. Please know I also realize change is something we all do not handle well. Someone once said that the only people who like change are babies. What a true statement in many cases. With change comes opportunities to be stretched and with stretch comes growth. I hope you will be in prayer for our church as we begin this new venture with the goal being to reach new people.
One of the concerns I have going to two services is what I call the "get to know you factor". There will be new people joining in both services and it will be difficult to get to know everyone without a little effort. We will make sure to keep the new member board up to date, but to me this makes our Sunday School time even more important. If you are not plugged into a Sunday School class, you need to be. This is one area where you get to know people and find out who is who.
Many new things will be coming our way in the next year. There will be many questions waiting to be answered. The main thing in my opinion is to keep the I's and me's to a minimum and keep the He's and Him's to a maximum. In other words we need to keep our eyes on Jesus!
I want to remind you about a couple of holiday traditions our church has during the month of December. On December 2nd we will have our traditional Hanging of the Greens Service at 6:00pm. On December 9th we will be having our church family holiday meal. This is an opportunity for us as a staff to say thank you for the privilege of getting to serve you and for all the ways you bless us throughout the year. Then on the 16th we will have our churchwide Christmas song service at 6:00pm followed by our annual church Christmas party in the fellowship hall. On December 24th we will have our Candlelight Lord's Supper service at 6:00 pm in the Sanctuary. I hope you make every effort to be a part of these exciting events as we celebrate the birth of our Savior as a church family!
Merry Christmas! ¶ 6:20 PM
